British Library Digitises 60000 Historical Books for iPad

Apple iPad owners are going to be provided with over 60,000 books via the 19th Century Historical Collection app, the British Library announced.

The national library has already made available near about 45000 titles to the subscribers of the app since June, this year, and it claims that the collection will be further expanded by the end of the year.

Users can subscribe to the app, which was developed by the library in collaboration with a software company named BiblioLabs, for just £1.99 a month.

"The online appetite for original historical content is huge and the library is delighted to be working with BiblioLabs to transform the accessibility and visibility of this remarkable collection of 19th century books," Caroline Brazier, the British Library's director of scholarship and collections stated, The Guardian reports.

"Our vision is to make more of our vast collections available to all, and the iPad app is a spectacular example of how this can work," he added.

The extensive collection of historical importance also includes the likes of the memoir of a battlefield nurse during the American civil war and an ethnographic study from 1884 of the gypsies of the Scottish Borders as well as a contemporary account of the exhumation of Napoleon’s body, according to the Guardian report.